Page 36 of The San Marco Heist

Scarlett slid in next to Will. “You happy with the nav system update?”

“As happy as I can be.” Brie yawned again. It was ten a.m. on Tuesday morning in Oxshott, the village south of London where our target lived. For Brie, that was only six. “I uploaded everything three hours ago and took a nap.”

I sat in the driver’s seat, swiveled around to face a fold-out table with a wall-mounted screen showing Brie, the group at the back of the van, and me.

Jayce was on her feet by the sliding van door. She paced from the door, between the counter and the bathroom opposite it, past the tiny fridge, to the desk. Then back to me at the front. She’d made comments about being cooped up at least a half dozen times last night, and this morning she was such a ball of energy, she seemed about to explode.

The others didn’t appear fazed by her movements.

Coffee, donuts, and silence. Binoculars. And many hours of calm. That was the surveillance I was used to. Not a van full of people, screens detailing everything, and the thief-acrobat, who couldn’t stop moving.

“Can you pop the skylight?” said Scarlett.

Jayce, who was at the back of the van, launched up on the desk and popped open the light above her. Before Scarlett got in another word, Jayce had hauled herself out through the opening, vanishing onto the roof. She moved fast. There were a few noises above us, and she hung down with her head and one arm extended. “Give me the little guy.”

Brie put a hand on her face to stifle a laugh, while Scarlett frowned.

“Don’t call it that.” Will pulled a small box out from a cabinet under the desk and opened it. He gingerly withdrew a little black something, no more than two inches in diameter.

I stood from my seat and walked the length of the van to see it in person. The drone was tiny. It looked like a child’s toy, not something that Brie was updating the nav systems for at three in the morning, let alone what this big van was concealing. “That’s it?”

Flames practically erupted in Will’s eyes, and Scarlett almost laughed.

Will turned it over, so the four blades were on the bottom. He jammed his finger at tiny pieces I could barely make out as he talked. “It has two cameras, can stream to us wirelessly over a four-kilometer distance, has onboard storage for ten hours of video, can compensate for any wind up to thirty kilometers an hour, all while being small enough it won’t trip any security designed to ignore a hummingbird. And all you can say is, ‘That’s it?’”

Jayce, still hanging from the roof, snapped her fingers. “Then give it to me so you can prove it’s as good as you say it is. Because if it’s not, I’m going into the house.”

Scarlett glanced up at her. “No, you’re not.”

As she took the drone from Will, Jayce smirked at Scarlett. “I’m already outside. How are you going to stop me?”

Scarlett’s eyebrow rose. Nothing more.

“Okay, okay, but this drone had better work.” She rolled back up to the roof, and Will tapped a few buttons on his keyboard, bringing another display up on the big-screen. Brie and Will chatted back and forth, checking systems, starting the rotors which made a high-pitched hum above us, and lifting the drone a few times. Another window appeared on the monitor, displaying Jayce and our parking space.

We’d pulled the van into a small wooded parking area which led to a walking trail half a mile outside of the gated community where the house was. The goal was to fly the drone up and over the trees, and then around the house to check for security cameras, ingress and egress points, and to film the interior.

With only a rough sketch of the main floor, we needed more. And Jayce was right. If this didn’t work, someone was going to have to go inside.

As far as this team knew, I did all of my surveillance from outside. Legally. With how much Scarlett had mistrusted me from the beginning and Rav’s warnings, I hadn’t told them about some of my less-than-legal jobs. Like the one that had taken me to the Maguire mansion last Friday night. But the truth was, if they needed someone to go in, I could do it. Maybe not as stealthily as Jayce would be able to, but I could talk my way into almost anywhere.

I returned to my seat at the front, most of my screen taken up by the two video feeds from the drone. One below, and one ahead.

The drone rose quickly, avoiding tree branches and leaves with no effort. Will was an excellent pilot. The drone moved remarkably fast given its size, in a near straight line despite the mild breeze. The camera feed included details of air speed, temperature, and direction.

Within ten minutes, it arrived above our target.

We’d reviewed enough satellite images of the house that the view of the roof was unremarkable. The basic floor plan was a hundred-foot long rectangle, by sixty feet deep. Front door at the south, pool to the west, tennis court to the east. The garage extended from the front on the western side, while turret-like rounded rooms decorated the back and sides of the main floor. Two dozen people milled about the backyard, despite the owners not being home. A few women in suits, while everyone else wore black pants and light-blue shirts.

“Event planners,” said Scarlett. “I recognize the uniform from the Blue Luxe website. They’re measuring. Probably putting up a tent for the reception.”

“In this weather?” Jayce’s head popped through the skylight. “I’m sure men in tuxes will be warm enough, but evening gowns?”

“They’ll have patio warmers. Probably a lot of them scattered around the yard.” Scarlett stood, offering her a hand. “Come down and watch.”

Jayce’s head descended, and she eased herself in a slow roll down to the desk. “There’s a walkway all around the roof.”

Scarlett took Jayce by the waist and eased her to the floor. “They’ll likely have at least one security member including that on their route, if not permanently manned.”

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